Dino Chronicles

This blog is named after my dog, Dino the wonder dog. Other than that, this blog doesn’t have a lot to do with him, except that some days, when I am just too busy or too tired or have a migraine, I let Dino write my blog for me. On days when he has not taken over the computer, I write about my life – the past, the present and the future - my travels far and near and my home. I would love it if you would follow along.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Here we are
with our second Christmas cookie post of the season. I don’t know what makes
these a Christmas staple – I think we should eat them year-round!

The story
of these iconic cookies begins when Ohio resident Freda Smith was making peanut
butter chocolate chip cookies and too late realized she had no chocolate chips.
She did have a bag of Hershey’s Kisses though and stuck them on top of the peanut
butter cookies.

In 1958,
she entered her recipe in the ninth annual Pillsbury Bake-off competition. Her
cookies didn’t even place. Instead the winner was something called accordion
treats, something nobody in this day and age has heard of, I bet.

Moral of
the story – winning is not that big a deal and you don’t have to be a winner to become a legend. (I like that. I
hope that saying takes off.)

So here’s
how I bake up Mrs. Smith’s cookies

1 cup softened
margarine

1 cup
peanut butter

1 cup
white sugar

1 cup
packed brown sugar

¼ cup milk

2
teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

Blend
these first ingredients together. I usually blend together the margarine and
peanut butter first, with the margarine warmish so they meld together well. I
also use this great Pampered Chef Measure-all cup to measure the peanut butter.
Anybody else have a better idea for measuring it and then getting it all out of
the measuring cup?

Next add
the rest of the items and blend well.

Add:

3 ½ cups
flour

2
teaspoons baking soda

1
teaspoon salt

Stir in
the last three ingredients and mix well.

Shape dough
into balls. I scoop out the dough with the medium scoop from Pampered Chef – no
I’m not a secret consultant. These are
the only Pampered Chef products I regularly use, besides, of course, my
stoneware.

Roll the
dough balls in sugar. I, along with the rest of world, generally roll them in
white sugar, but I thought I’d try green and red sugar this year to make them
more festive.

Bake at
375 for 10 minutes. As soon as they come out of the oven, press a chocolate
star into each one. Some recipes call for Hershey’s kisses, but do people
really unwrap them all, or can you buy them unwrapped. Also, I kind of like the
taste of the stars better.

Slide
them off the pans before they cool completely.

Freeze them as soon as they are completely
cool and bury them in the bottom of the freezer or they won’t make it to
Christmas!

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Every Tuesday in December, I plan to post about
a different one of my favorite Christmas specials. Today I’ll start with
everyone’s favorite ruminant from 1964.

I
wanted to begin the month with this show because it seems that when I was a
kid, this was the first Christmas special to air on TV. These poor kids today.
They can watch their favorite shows anytime they want, just throw in the DVD or
pull it up on Netflix. Maybe that’s part of what’s wrong with the younger
generation. No sense of waiting and wondering.

I
digress.

So
why does “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” make my list? For starters, doesn’t it
make everyone’s list? We all know the songs. There’s comedy, adventure,
romance. And doesn’t everyone always root for the underdog? I’m surprised with
so much attention on bullying (and for good reason, don’t get me wrong), that I
haven’t heard anything about Rudolph and his friend Hermey being the victims of
bullying and what they do to overcome it. (Of course, I do kind of live under a
rock, so I miss a lot.)

But
then there’s that final scene. Rudolph is hitched to the front of the sleigh.
He has saved Christmas. Everyone’s happy. Everyone except a dolly for Sue, Charlie
in the Box and the train with square wheels. In fact I just read on some
website of 10 facts you didn’t know about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that
in the original broadcast they never showed what happened to the misfit toys.
But there was such an outrage by young viewers, that the following year the
producers added that scene with the iconic line from Dolly, “I haven’t any
dreams left to dream.”

To
which I say, you always have a dream and you have to keep dreaming it. Someday it
will come true. It did for the misfit toys and it will for anyone who doesn’t
give up.

That’s
why Rudolph stands the test of time in my book, and not just because it is the
longest running holiday special ever.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Welcome to
this year’s Christmas edition of my Sunday inspirational blogs. Every Sunday,
for the next six weeks I will post an updated issue of the blogs I posted five
years ago. I thought they were kind of cute, so decided they were worth
revisiting. All the pictures are of animals either my daughter or I
photographed on our trips to Kenya. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the
story.

All the neighbors were filled with awe, and
throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these
things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this
child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.

Luke 1:65-66 New
International Version

Visitor: Excuse me, what is everyone talking about?

Dog: Well, you knew that Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth
had a baby, didn’t you?

Visitor: No, I didn’t. I’m new to town.

Dog: They are a really old couple. Nice though. They throw
their scrapes out to me. Anyway, they are really old and never had any kids,
and then all of a sudden she got pregnant.

Visitor: Really?

Dog: But here’s the really wild part. When Zachariah found
out they were going to have a baby, he suddenly couldn’t talk at all.

Visitor: Why was that?

Dog: The people say that it is because he didn’t believe
that God could do this. But here’s the rest of the story. Today, when he wrote
down that he wanted to name the baby John, suddenly he could talk again. He
said that it is because he obeyed God.

Visitor: How did he obey God?

Dog: He named the baby John. Nobody could figure out why.
Zachariah said that is the name that God chose for the baby. And that the baby
is going to be very special.

Visitor: How is he going to be special?

Dog: I don’t know.

Dog 2: I do.

Visitor: Well, hello, I didn’t see you laying there.

Dog 2: It all has to do with Elizabeth’s cousin. She is
going to have a baby too. And they say that baby is going to be even more
special than John. John was born to lead the way for Mary’s baby.

Visitor: How do you know that?

Dog 2: Why don’t you go visit Mary and find out.

Visitor: Maybe I will have to do that. Where can I find her?

Dog 2: She lives in Nazareth.

Visitor: Well, thank you both for all of your help. I will
have to check this out.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

As we swing
into the Christmas season, I have got blog ideas lined up for the entire month.
Thursdays are going to be Christmas cookie day. What’s your favorite Christmas
cookie and do you think that I’m going to write about it here? You’ll have to
check in every week and see.

The
Spritz cookie has its origins the same place as I do - Germany. I don’t know
how long the Loehmer family was in Germany, but the Spritz cookie has been
there since the 1500’s. These cookies get their name from the German word Spritzgeback. Geback
is baked and spritz? Well, that means
to squirt.

Now
before you swear that you will never eat a Spritz cookie again, think about it?
Have you ever made Spritz cookies or seen someone do it? If the dough isn’t
just right, it can squirt out of the cookie press. I know mine does sometimes.

A lot of
people don’t like making them because, as just mentioned, that dough has to be
just the right consistency or it doesn’t come out of the press right and you
end up with a mess.

I’m no
genius at this, but I have found that the key is temperature. And not just the
dough. The press and the pans and everything else that comes in contact with
that dough needs to be slightly on the cool side. The more you handle those
things, the warmer they get and then the squirting starts.

For
better or worse, here’s the recipe I use:

1 cup
butter or margarine

¾ cup
sugar

1 egg

1 tsp
vanilla

2 ¼ cups
flour

½ tsp
salt

¼ tsp
baking powder

Cream the
first four ingredients, then gradually add the flour, salt and baking powder.
Recipes always say to sift the flour and other dry ingredients together before
adding them to the moist stuff. I never do that, I hate to dirty another bowl.
I just dump the salt, soda or whatever else on top of the first bunch of flour
I add and kind of work it in. Alton Brown, I am not.

Anyway,
oh, yea, preheat oven to 375 degrees. I never do that either. It’s a wonder
anything I bake ever turns out. That first batch just has to bake a little
longer while the oven heats up.

Ok, maybe
this sharing cookie recipes once a week was a mistake. Yea, definitely, coz I’m
not going to be able to tell you how long I bake these things. I just keep
checking them until they’re done.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

About 80 miles north of the state capital, on the
west side of I-39, resides the Hancock Agricultural Research Station. Run by
the University of Wisconsin, it is a 412-acre research farm where trials of potatoes,
field corn, sweet corn, soybeans, snap beans, carrots, cucumbers and
switchgrass are run.

I drive down this highway quite a bit, probably a
few times a year. The vegetable part of this station isn’t what I have always
found fascinating. It’s the beautiful flower garden you can see from the
interstate.

I’ve always wanted to stop, and finally that day in
October, when Hubby and I were taking a drive, I made him pull over.

The spot I was captivated by is actually the A. R.
Albert and Villetta Hawley-Albert Horticultural Garden. This garden has been
here since 1993 and was named, in part, after A. R. Albert who had been the superintendent
of the Hancock Station from 1922 to 1947. And that was all the information I was
able to gather off the internet.

The only other thing I got is pictures.

The beginning of October was a little late to catch anything in full-bloom.

Still saw lots of pretty stuff though.

Not so late in the season that they had drained the ponds.

I love this grass. I've been wanting some in my yard for a long time.

My favorite all-time picture. How cool, huh?

Hubby's giving me the "have you taken enough pictures yet?" look.

So that's it folks. I have finally gotten through all those road trips and day trips I took earlier this fall. Well, actually, there is one more, but - it's a story for another time.

We're heading into winter! Come back this Thursday, when I start my Christmas series.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

I
really had planned on posting at least my usual three times this week. I even
thought about posting a daily Bible verse on giving thanks, because there are a
lot of them to pick from, for good reason.

That
did not happen. My week kind of fell apart on me. I do know, however, that no
matter how my weeks, or my days, or even my months turn out, I still have more
to be thankful for than to not be thankful for. I am blessed beyond
measure.

I
was going to post this to my blog yesterday but then ran out of time and
couldn’t think of anything to say about it anyway. Today, I was hit in the face
with the reality of homelessness and just now read this again. Wow. Once again,
God’s timing is impeccable.

It’s
so easy to stereotype the homeless – they live in a big city, they have a drug
or alcohol history, they suffer from mental illness, they are lazy, they could
have a nice home if they wanted one but instead they choose to live on the
streets. You can’t say that every homeless person fits into one of these stereotypes. Or that even most of them do. Each homeless person is as different as each snowflake. Each has a pattern and
a story of their very own. And the best way to start to help them is to not
judge and to instead treat them as a person, the same way that you would like
to be treated.

Today, at the time, I gave this homeless
person everything that I could under the circumstances. Was it enough? As I sit
here in my warm house with a full belly and a cat on my lap, I’d have to admit
no. But I can’t let guilt weigh me down. I’m left with little to do except to
pray for this person and for the people who I must trust to help him. Then I
have to turn it over to God.

Not
your typical Thanksgiving day message, huh? If you are reading this, though,
where ever you, whatever your circumstances, you have a lot to be thankful for.

Learn more about the first Christmas any time of the year.

How Did I Get Here?

I have always wanted to be a writer, but in 1986, I fell into the medical field and have yet to crawl out. After a lot of reflection, I realize that maybe health care is my calling, but what is my passion? Writing. I also have a passion for my Savior Jesus. What else do you need to know? I have a wonderful husband, two grown children, four cats, and of course, Dino the wonder dog. In my spare time, I enjoy sewing on a cloudy day and laying in the sun on a sunny day.